This week, the latest reality offering hits our television screens. How the Other Half Live brings two families together. One rich, one poor. The premise is that the rich family "assists" the poor. What form the assistance will take – cash, contacts or condescension – will be dramatically revealed tomorrow evening. Roll up for the DSS freak show! Yes, that's right, snuggle down Channel 4 voyeurs, you can feed your faces on the latest slice of poverty voyeurism, while becoming more malnourished in the process, and then sick the whole lot back up and forget about it till the next time.

I sat through the show where rich people were made to be "homeless" for the night, to "experience" homelessness, while a camera crew tagged along to capture every stagnant emotion and tantrum. Then there was Secret Millionaire, the rich man's equivalent of social poverty pilgrimage, entering impoverished world, only to emerge redeemed and chastened, like a biblical parable, to much grateful sobbing from the few who were that week's deserving poor. However, scratch the grubby surface and the irony is there for all to see. James Benamore, who went into Moss Side, actually made part of his fortune from the £50 fees he was charging the same groups of people for the possibility of a sub-prime loan.

And now we have How the Other Half Live. Hopelessness as soap opera. Poverty as entertainment. Fun for the whole family; the families sat at home watching it, the poor ones taking part hoping to receive "assistance", and the rich ones only too willing to show millions of television viewers just how "assisting" and righteous they are. Incidentally, the publicity material for HTOHL features a rather telling comment innocently left by one of the poor girl's schoolfriends, who states that even though "she has this problem she is wonderful at mths (sic) and she carries on her life as a normal child". One half is normal, the other abnormal. Carriers of a disease. What next for our screens? Child benefit by telephone vote?

Perhaps we should even view the producers of HTOHL as building upon the televisual equivalent of that tradition of "poverty observers" such as Dickens, Mayhew, Engels, Riis et al, shining a light on the forgotten pockets of impoverished Britain? Or should we just tune out and feast our faces on the dramatic interplay – the tears, the envy, the shame – between the rich and poor? One thing I'm sure about, the only aim of these programmes is to exploit the poor for the purposes of cheap entertainment – and vast profits in medialand. Let's do these families a bigger favour by tuning in, and switching off our own cheap voyeurism. It is clear that social inequalities can't be remedied by this type of poverty ogling. It is nothing more than a mockery. The only "other half" here are the programme makers and commissioners, who need assistance to see that they continue to progressively cheapen television, and those who get off on it.